Sony has finally decided to release a pair of earbuds and a remote control for the PSP that actually match the system. This was one of our small gripes with the PSP during its pre-launch phase. These are the accessories that should have been packed in with the PSP, but I digress. They are also releasing a standalone battery charger, which lowers charge time when compared to charging the PSP directly. You can purchase the charger for $32 USD, and the buds and remote for $25 USD very soon.

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Scientists have developed a microscopic toothbrush that is so small that it can clean the inside of a cappilary. The brush is made of carbon nanotubes, and can even paint the internals of a cappilary. Most paintbrushes are made of thin metal or animal hair, but carbon nanotubes provide the best of both worlds:

Carbon nanotubes, on the other hand, are 30 times stronger than steel, yet five times less dense. They are highly elastic, resistant to heat, have large surface areas and even conduct electricity. The latter property makes them highly suitable for the contact brushes used in electric motors, says Ajayan.

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At Nokia Connection 2005 a bunch of phones were announced. The Nokia 6060 just happens to be a flip phone, a rarity for Nokia. Of course, they are revisiting their focus on flip phones this year, so this is no surprise. This one is entry-level. Expect a 128x160 display and MP3 ringtones in this dual band GSM unit. Expect the Nokia 6060 to retail at about $170 USD, or 150 EUR in the third quarter of 2K5.

The Sony Ericsson Z520a is a phone made for those who use their phone as much as they do for function. engadget got the details on the phone today, which should include a VGA camera, a quad-band radio, a 65,000 color screen, and integrated Bluetooth. As far as they could tell, the screen left them unimpressed.

Remember the problems that plagued the N64? Lack of a disc based format and difficult console to develop for. Nintendo tried to fix this with the Gamecube and tried to be cool. “We can match anything our friends over at Sony can do” I was skeptical when I heard that line from Nintendo, but they were right. The Gamecube proved to be a far more capable machine than the PS2. What was achieved? Not much. Nintendo went with a cheaper more efficient disc based format, and even then people looked down on them. While they fixed the problems with the N64, and believe me they fixed quite a bit, they also created many mistakes with the GCN.

After E3 many people, including myself, said it looked like the PS3’s graphics would be better than the Xbox 360. Well, ATi claims that the 360 will out perform the PS3 because Nvidia’s RSX chip is lacking the unified shader architecture that the Xenon chip has. If this is the truth than Microsoft made a good deal switching to ATi for their next-gen. Read more for a more technical breakdown.

“It’s way better than I would have expected at this point in the history of 3D graphics,” said Huddy of the Xbox 360 hardware. “The unified shader architecture alone is capable of giving a performance increase of a factor of nearly two over the hardware that we have in PCs today. That’s because we see many cases, and this is particularly true on consoles, where games are limited by one of the two groups of engines in the graphics chip, either the vertex engines or the pixel engines. With a unified pipeline we can now devote 100% of the hardware to which ever task is the bottleneck.”

Electronic boards in the classrooms are becoming more popular now. Using fingers as a stylus, teachers and students are able to share assignments, surf the web, and view video all where chalkboards used to rule. Most classrooms today use a whiteboard and a projection screen for any of the fun computer stuff. Are these new boards really a great thing? In my experience, many professors prefer to ditch the projector in favor of the whiteboard since it allows them to write and draw their thoughts faster.

Rumors, gotta love ‘em. Here’s another one for you. Seems that there have been talks between Skype and Yahoo - perhaps to merge IM clients? Skype would definitely be a great acquisition for Yahoo, however their close friend, Bell, might not like this idea. We’ll have to keep an eye out for this one.

I feel a high sense of Star Trek-like nostalgia looking at this new product. The cards are capable of holding 30GB, and cost only $1. If the reader goes down in price, I can see this product hitting mass appeal in no time. Optware Corporation has also designed a holographic disc that holds a terabayte and is the same size as a DVD (or CD).